Page 35 of New Girl in the City
Chapter Nine
Ilasted all of one hour and 17 minutes before I was done with my date to Wren, sometimes artist, full time asshole. I’d been dutifully strolling the perimeter and making conversation when Wren Masters let his freak—or asshole, flag fly.
“You know you look great for your age.”
I stopped, a cup of shitty wine lifted to my lips and faced this man, a man that was a couple years older than me, before lowering it to ask.
“My age?”
“Yeah, you know how hard it is to find a chick that’s about my age but still takes care of themselves?” He asked, shaking his head and taking a long pull of wine. “It’s like night of the living dead out there, but you know...fatter, and saggier.”
My hand trembled and I nearly dropped my stupid little plastic cup. Where the fuck did this joker get off talking like this? But even still, I reined it in, because this was his art show, right? I would still destroy him but do it real polite like.
“Well, I think it’s hard to—“ I began, because if there was one thing I hated it was this.Thisbeing men thinking it was their right to comment on what women did, or did not do, with their bodies.
“It’s just like try a little. It’s not that hard,” Wren interrupted me, adding one more slice of bullshit to his rapidly growing bullshit sandwich. I wasn’t a fan of crap like this on a normal night, and really not a fan of it on a first date. Wasn’t this when they were supposed to be on their best behavior? Come on Wren, try a little. I had heard it was all downhill after the first date and given my experience I was inclined to agree.
It’s why I had never really been one for second dates.
Not after Martin, that is.
Wren opened his mouth and took a deep breath, signaling he wasn’t done. I tapped my foot, hating that I was wasting the totally awesome shoes Claudia had insisted I wear right off her damn feet. They didn’t deserve to be standing here, listening to what I was sure was shaping up to be a pretty awful monologue about Wren’s hardships in the dating world, and how they correlated with what he thought women of a certain age normally did, said, or happened to look like.
“Yeah, you are right. It’s hard for me to date.” He tipped his cup at me as if we were having a conversation, and not what was happening. Which was him talking at me while I seethed.
What the hell was I right about? He hadn’t even let me finish my thought.
“That's why I got so excited you messaged me back on the app,” he continued, and I nodded about to make my point about how his opinions and thoughts really don’t matter fuck all to any woman, ever, for the remainder of all time, “For an elite dating service you’d think more of the women would be into fitness. Or I don’t know, Pilates? That's fitness, right? Women of a certain age need to try harder,” he added, and I slowly blinked at him before I realized that this date was going nowhere because I in fact did not want to be on a date with Wren, and I wasn’t having any fun.
It wouldn’t even be fun to tell him off. I’d just be wasting my breath, and who really wanted to do that? I gave him a thin smile, held up my finger signaling I needed just a minute, before I threw back my wine with a quick toss of my head. I put the cup on a tray and pulled out my phone.
‘I’m done. Get me out of here.’
Once I hit send I looked at Wren to see that he was giving me a confused, pinched look. The kind you might get when you got some seriously unpleasant news, which wasn’t that far from the truth. I was out of here and I wasted no time in telling him so.
“I gotta go.”
There it was simple and easy.
He shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What? But why? I thought we were having a great time.”
“I think that’s a tiny bit of an exaggeration,” I said, scrunching my fingers together and shrugging, before grabbing another small cup of wine off the table beside me. “I’ve been quietly getting loaded while listening to you, but you just went into no man’s land of irredeemable shit you can say on a date. No, correction, you went way into shit no one should say ever.”
Now it was his turn to slow blink at me. “Me? What did I say?”
“Women of a certain age?” I waved my wine cup a little but was careful not to even lose a drop. Shitty or not, I was gonna need every bit of it. “What the hell does that even mean, and who do you think you are commenting on a woman’s appearance? At all! And saggier and fatter?”
He raised his hands in defense. “Look, I was just saying that older women have a way of not caring what they look like.”
“You do realize you’re older too?”
“I’m only 38.”
“And I’m only 36. You’re older than me.”
He chuckled and shook his head like I just didn’t get it, and that pissed me off. I’d been annoyed before, but now I was enraged. “That’s different. Men age differently than women, Mel.” He narrowed his eyes and gestured with his wine cup in a way that had me wanting to swat at it. “What are you, like a feminist or something?”
“Of all the bullshit things you could have possibly said, you went with that? What are you, twelve?” I demanded. My skin crawled at his use of the nickname I had in no way told him he could use.
